Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday July 08, 2014 @01:47PM
from the beware-the-all-seeing-actuaries dept.

New submitter jbmartin6 writes: The Panopticon may be coming, but perhaps not how we think. Instead of a massive government surveillance program, we might end up subjected to ubiquitous monitoring to save on our insurance premiums. The "internet of things (you can't get away from)" makes this more and more possible. Here a company saved money on its health insurance premiums by distributing Fitbits and an online service to enable reporting fitness gains back to the insurance company. We've already seen the stories on using black boxes to monitor drivers. There is even an insurance company named Panoptic! Heck, why not a premium hike for owners of this or that "aggressiveness gene"? What if in the future we got a quick "+50 cents" tweet for every scoop of ice cream? I suppose the natural stopping point might be the balance between an individual's willingness to be monitored and the desire to reduce insurance premiums.

Don't be. If it is ever decided that thou shalt be tracked, they will simply install Accelerometer/GPS-based black boxes in all of the vehicles, and your engine will be irrelevant. They'll know how you were driving, and when you were doing it.

But really, it comes down to that they can raise your rates when they want to for any or no reason. The only thing stopping them is competition from others that want the same revenue source.

Yep. Anything which is mandatory and not fully transparent is guaranteed to be a scam.

Furthermore, ECU integration isn't that important. If the device has a set of accelerometers and a GPS receiver (which I'm pretty sure they all do), they can know all about how the car's being driven even if it has a carbed engine.

Every government is owned by money. I think you've been swallowing too much of your own propaganda. Driving is a necessity at this point. there are politicians who think internet access is a right..and if that's a right, then driving definitely is. No car = no job if you live outside the city.

Of course you do.. because leftist ideology is all about retribution. It's end justifies means disguised as a principled stand. Having or not having insurance does not prevent a government from enforcing law. I ju

It's the perfect libertarian excuse for corporate abuse. You don't have to go along with the abuse. You can just live like an Amish person and avoid the abuse if you really want to. It's all your "choice".

It's the perfect libertarian excuse for corporate abuse. You don't have to go along with the abuse. You can just live like an Amish person and avoid the abuse if you really want to. It's all your "choice".

Says the guy that has no clue what Libertarians believe.

It's about liberty... including liberty from business and even other citizens. Anyone that understood and followed libertarian ideals would want this sort of practice stopped.

It's the perfect libertarian excuse for corporate abuse. You don't have to go along with the abuse. You can just live like an Amish person and avoid the abuse if you really want to. It's all your "choice".

Well, to be fair, Libertarians also often suggest the dissolution of borders. Everything which was not necessary for the function of the minimally-sized government would be private property, and you could sell it to anyone you liked. But they'd be motivated not to move to certain places because they'd be exposed to prejudice; under such a system, you cannot be forced to trade with someone. It's a sort of choose-your-own-feudalism-adventure.

Mandating insurance forces premiums _down_ because the pool of insured people becomes much bigger. By now most car insurances are near the lowest possible values - most car insurance companies are barely profitable. It's not yet true for health insurance, but it's already happening there.

Mandating insurance forces premiums _down_ because the pool of insured people becomes much bigger.

Thats not how it works.

Increasing the number of insured people is meaningless to the premiums needed unless the amount of risk associated with the "new" policies is as-a-matter-of-fact less than the amount of risk associated with the "old" policies. Now if thats true AND both "new" and "old" are in the same pool, only THEN would the cost of policies change.

What you have done is taken an argument from another situation (perhaps the liberal justification for getting everyone on health insurance), and the

Driver's license details and SSN on the other hand? Well, not so easy to fake (unless you're an illegal alien, I guess).

(I know, I know - in most states you don't have to update your DL info when you move, but in Oregon you're required to update your DL address within 30 days of moving, or you face a rather huge fine in addition to any other citations, should the cop discover that you haven't done so.)

They track you using your credit card. The cards are because people want them these days. Albertsons finally knuckled under and started offering them. Not because they needed them for tracking, like I said they already did that, but because customers whined they weren't getting a "good deal". So they raised their prices, and introduced a card.

sure "one" could do that, but "one" wouldn't benefit with any new understanding, **because that's a stupid comparison**

i can "draw an analogy" to pissing in a jar, that doesn't mean anything

you're giving everyone a free pass, and assuming the best of intentions on their part....when if you were using your analytical brain, you'd see that the past has taught us to assume the opposite: companie

One day, after you stop in at the local Ice cream shop or fast food place, you get an email:

You have consumed products that have been deemed harmful to your health. You premium has been temporarily increased by 1% for this month. Continuing these unhealthy practices can result in a permanent increase.

Actually, this kind of stuff is NOT possible under Obamacare. Health insurance companies can't discriminate based on your medical history, the premium only depends on your location, age and smoking/non-smoking status.

without always using cliches like "panopticon". We'll take you more seriously, we'll assume you can think for yourself rather than just parroting something someone else said, and we might even read the article you linked to. Thanks.

How can "panopticon" possibly be a cliche, when it's a word that probably less than 5% of the general public has any idea what it even means? Just imagine a Letterman style 'Man in the Street' interview - Q: "Sir or mam, do you think America is becoming a Panopticon State?" A: "Um, WTF is that optical thingy you said?" If this has become a cliche, then your use of a phrase such as "think for yourself rather than just parroting something someone else said" has become so cliche that we should definitely ig

But everyone wants to pay the rates of the healthiest, safest, best maintained because if you have to pay more than that you must be getting ripped off.

Most people can't understand statistics or probabilities that extend past a single coin flip. Hedges, short and long positions, defensive financial tactics are way beyond your typical American who can barely balance a checkbook. Understanding that insurance is a combination of both - not gonna happen. The only dichotomy that people "understand" about insurance is that it is an evil expense due every month that gives them nothing in return, and a magical pixie horse that pays you money if something bad happens to you.

There is no issue with risk pools being fine-grained. The issue is that low-risk (and even no-risk) things are included.

Are you at "risk" of a yearly physical?

The point of insurance is supposed to be that if something unlikely and expensive happens to you, that you arent out the cost of that unlikely and expensive thing. There is value in knowing that you will not have to sell or lose your house if something unlikely and expensive happens to you, enough value in it that a middle man can also profit. Its win-win in these cases.

Its not win-win when you have to pay that middle mans cut for non-risky things like that yearly physical. This is true when the middle man is an insurance company, but it is also true when that middle man is a government or some powerful government-corporate hybrid entity that can force you into giving them a cut.

In the case of auto-insurance, if you own your vehicle then you are only forced to get insurance for unlikely and expensive things, and only when those things can happen to other people while you are driving. Routine maintenance simply is not mandated because it used to be that people were smart enough to know what insurance was for and wouldn't let the government pull that sort of shit.

Except that credit score is actually quite a good predictor of car insurance risk. Not saying that it's causal, but, overall, people who pay their bills on time also tend to drive more cautiously and get into fewer accidents.

Except that credit score is actually quite a good predictor of car insurance risk. Not saying that it's causal, but, overall, people who pay their bills on time also tend to drive more cautiously and get into fewer accidents.

Yup - the beauty of actuarial tables is that they contain all those non-politically-correct correlations we're not supposed to talk about. We can hate what is in the tables, but they are cold hard statistics. Certainly they are open to over-interpretation, but the correlations are what they are.

Yup - there are some criteria that we've explicitly decided NOT to let people use (i.e. even if you could show that race and auto insurance costs were correlated, and that the relationship was statistically significant, you still couldn't charge people more for being black/white/Asian/whatever), but credit score isn't one of those.

Yup - there are some criteria that we've explicitly decided NOT to let people use (i.e. even if you could show that race and auto insurance costs were correlated, and that the relationship was statistically significant, you still couldn't charge people more for being black/white/Asian/whatever), but credit score isn't one of those.

Actuaries are pretty clever, they can typically find a benign-sounding proxy for the forbidden criteria.

That looks a bit too invasive to me - there is no way it could be compulsory in the current USA constitution and I bet there are far more 'bad' genetic tendencies than 'good' ones.

But the fitbit stuff, I could see occurring - 10% reduction if you wear one 24/day and qualify. Not that different from what we do with cars today. Most importantly, unlike the DNA stuff, a fitbit monitor would theoretically encourage better behavior, which makes political sense, while dna mapping has tons of political issues.

Why not simply outlaw insurance companies attempting to cheat? Because this is basically what insurance companies are trying to do -- make a big play at getting something for nothing off their subscribers.

Or when it comes to moral hazard, is there just one set of rules for us little people, and another for the corporations?

With enough data these companies can compile a "Safety Score", kind of like how a few companies know everything about your financial life and give you a credit score.

Why wouldn't an apartment or condo community want to check your safety score? A lot of them do background checks and credit checks now, I can definitely imagine people wanting to live in communities where everyone has a safety score above some number. And I can imagine communities for the rejects. The more data companies compile on you the m

insurance companies are taking a page from social media and hedging their bets that you will concede to them monitoring your every waking movement. In most cases you arent told what exact amount you stand to save on insurance until after the metric is collected, and its usually very little (between 5-15%) You arent even told what metrics that little box is collecting or how theyre used, or how long theyre maintained. Most of the information they keep with these snooping devices becomes proprietary once you sign up. So why are you so ill informed about this?
its largely because insurance companies are using the metrics to forecast profit and loss to their board and shareholders, not because they actually care about saving you money. In some cases signing up for a biometric program might quietly absolve the insurance company from having to treat you for a whole range of different ailments they attribute to a sedentary lifestyle, thus saving them in quarterly losses. The worst part is nobody is asking questions like 'does this fitbit factor into my HIPAA protection?' or 'can this vehicle data be used against me in a court of law?'

full disclosure: im signing up for a workplace fitbit program subsidized by my employer. The data, presumably, is going to be aggregated from the devices and submitted to the health insurance company as "harmless biometrics" but as I cant sign up for my employers healthcare for another 7 months, I have no intention of using the device outside of the data i scrape from it in linux using fitbitd.

The insurance industry has owned Washington for some time now. Naturally they would be able to get away with this kind of invasion of privacy with zero backlash. In 2010 the insurance industry started cashing in on their investment by pushing through the ACA bill, but that is only the start of it.

"‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! THAT’S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.
A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston’s body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and — one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency — bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.
‘THERE, comrades! THAT’S how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I’m thirty-nine and I’ve had four children. Now look.’ She bent over again. ‘You see MY knees aren’t bent. You can all do it if you want to,’ she added as she straightened herself up. ‘Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don’t all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what THEY have to put up with. Now try again. That’s better, comrade, that’s MUCH better,’ she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.’"

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
1984 - George Orwell

Really, the best thing we can do now is to make sure everyone is healthy and educated and happy.

If the idea is to make people healthy so premiums go down, Obamneycare is a complete failure in that aspect since the smokers, obese, alcoholics and drug users don't have to change. They can continue doing what they're doing, secure in the knowledge that someone perfectly healthy, such as myself, is forced to cough up their money to pay for the bad choices these people make with their lives.

I feel the exact same way about all those reckless, careless, risk-taking, jock-want-to-be’s who risk their lives and wellbeing playing senseless games on the field, riding bikes and skateboards without thought or concern, and adventuring up mountain sides without care.

I find it absolutely appalling that I am forced to cough up my money to pay for their reckless behavior, broken bones, torn ligaments, hamstring injuries, and more!!

But the problem of having the NHS pay for treating useless fat chavs who eat too much, is far outweighed by relieving the entire population of the danger of medical bankruptcy at the hands of rapacious private health insurers and doctors.

And you know what? We in England **LOVE** it.

Medical bankruptcy is unheard-of in the UK, and we love it. Rich tossers who don't like having to wait for elective surgery can still get the gold-plated private crap if they really want it.

You've posted twice about the supposed wonders of the NHS, but the reality doesn't seem to corroborate your claims. There are numerous reports about the massive financial crisis the NHS is facing. Evidently the problems are the worst they've been in a decade, resulting in significant layoffs and that 44% of hospitals will end the year in deficit. The fact that the things were bad only a decade ago seems to imply that the system has always had a problem with sustainability.

Sustainability seems to be a significant problem with socialized healthcare systems the world over. That's where the problems arise. Americans are hit with the cost of healthcare up front, Europeans pay for it indirectly via high taxes and other compromises. You'll likely be hit with a huge bill in the US, but at least if a doctor spots something of concern you'll be scheduled for tests the very next day. If they find a problem you can be in surgery the following week. In Europe you end up on waiting lists and hope things don't get worse before you get treatment. Unless you're wealthy, then you can pay for prompt care, which ironically causes the same economic divide people complain about in the US.

There are other more subtle problems I've personally observed in Europe in Asia. Doctors are overburdened and relatively underpaid. So I've found that they tend to gloss over issues and don't really spend enough time evaluating a patient's condition. These and many other problems are the sorts of things you only really start noticing when you've lived in a country for any length of time. I've noticed that immigrants to the US always complain about the cost of healthcare. Until they start noticing those subtle differences, the extra effort American doctors put into patient care, prompt treatment and a general sense that everything is handled more thoroughly.

At the end of the day, healthcare is a massively complex and expensive beast. I've yet to see an implementation that comes close to solving most critical issues.

It's OK when the government actually does this, but it's BAD when slashdot pretends the private sector is doing it.

I tend to agree with your statement, absent the sarcasm.

The government scares me less because they don't want to maximize the money they get from me. In theory, I have far more control over my government than my insurers. Certainly I have more oversight, and there are laws governing what the government can do with my information. Private companies don't have the same restrictions, and even

"The government scares me less because they don't want to maximize the money they get from me."

What country do you live in, I want to move where you live because here in the USA the government thinks all money is theirs unless deemed otherwise.

In the US.

There's a fairly trivial proof that I am correct. See, the government has an army, a police force, the ability to have banks reassign/lock my accounts, and the ability to just print quintiillion dollar bills* and inflate my cash to nothing. They can

The government scares me less because they don't want to maximize the money they get from me.

I take it you have never been audited by the IRS. Worst thing I have ever had to endure, and that was as a college student filing a 1040 EZ and only having one job and a checking account. It was similar to one of those somewhat creepy police interrogation scenes in movies meets the stereotypical DMV waiting room.

Pretend nothing. Last year it was a simple, "fill out this questionnaire and enroll in one of these quick online courses and save $30 bucks a month." This year we have to do the same questionnaire, same courses, "oh but also go to your doctor and have a physical and blood work done, and here send this form back with all the results while your at it. Don't like our end run around of HIPPA regs? Enjoy paying $35 extra a month."

This reminds me of buffet vs. a la carte expenses, just applied to insurance. If eating ice cream were to cost $0.50 extra each time (or I were to "save" 50 cents when I didn't eat ice cream), I might be more conscious about that cost and decide to not eat any than if that cost were figured in and distributed among all users buffet-style.

This may result in a healthier population, I would imagine. But given percentage profit caps due to the ACA (at least in the US), I suspect that profits would go down as

I might be more conscious about that cost and decide to not eat any than if that cost were figured in and distributed among all users buffet-style.

You assume that these companies would operate on objective and reasonable standards - that's so cute...

No, really, it is. Remember when everyone said that butter was bad for you and you had to eat margarine instead? Now it's the other way 'round (or looking to go that way). So - how would you feel about having to pay for all those times you bought real butter all those years?

Oh, even better - let's talk diets! Not like recommendations for those don't ever change from, say, the old four food groups to pyramid to tetrahedron, to... - oh, wait.

No thanks - I prefer to not put my eating habits and health in the hands of some corporate asshats.

Mind you, I'm 6' tall and weigh 170 lbs, and I play outdoors for fun. I also eat good food in moderation, but occasionally I love a big steak or a big ol' bowl of ice cream. This brings up another thing - no two people are alike. Some can wolf down a metric ton of crap food (I used to) with no ill effects, but you want them to be lumped in with a bunch of folks who gain 15 lbs just from the mere scent of caramel candy? Screw that.

Very true. Ideally corporations would figure out that there are no demonstrated outcomes for diet composition, and thus it isn't in their interests to force their customers to adhere to one. In practice they may not do so, or there might be government pressure to pick whatever is the fad of the day.

I'd LOVE for there to be some decent clinical trials that study diet in a scientific manner. Just about all the data which exists is basically uncontrolled - no blinding, often no randomization, no actual outc

Why stop at ice cream? There's a lot of activities that have some kind of risk associated with them, it wouldn't be fair to single some out. Riding your bike? 5 bucks to your accident insurance because you could have an accident. Climbing a ladder to change a light bulb? 2 bucks because you could fall down. Fucking... depends, is it your wife or someone random? The latter is of course more expensive due to STDs.

But I really do NOT want to know where the detector for that would have to be located...

Reminds me of all the water conservation efforts. We used less water, the utilities brought in less money, so they had to raise the rates to offset the loss. In the end we all use less water, but pay more for the service.

I bet this will only work for insurance up the point where hospitals have to charge more to make up for empty rooms.

The difference between a utility and a hospital is that the former is a natural monopoly. The latter may or may not be one.

If the utility needs to charge more money to survive, you don't really have a choice about paying it if the charges are unavoidable. You can change WHO pays them (taxes vs bills, public vs private, etc), but unless you want to ditch running water you're stuck.

Hospitals aren't quite as locked in. If a community has 3 hospitals (I realize that not all do), and as a result of cost conta

You cannot choose whether the IOT comes to your work, and already now you are obliged to have a smart meter in the EU. And the companies will enable IOT features whether you want it or not, like the gsm modem in intel chipsets. It will be like planned obsolescence: you don't want it, but have no choice.

I think it's the same in N. America. My government, who is always claiming no money, spent $2 billion to install them claiming they're only so they can tell when the power goes out quicker. My meter just spent 6 months flashing error 7, they then showed up to reset it and the next week replaced it. Considering they're supposed to use the cell network and there is no cell coverage here, it seems like a big waste but as they're replacing taxes with fees and things like higher electricity prices I'm sure there

...ever put in that car insurance fob into your auto's computer port? (e.g. Progressive's Snapshot [progressive.com], where they treat it as a cute little device that aggressively records everything your car is doing when you drive.) People (not corporations, *individuals*) go out of their way to use these stupid things, not fully realizing (or caring) that they're willingly allowing an insurance company to monitor everything they do.

But you know, it's okay because they get a discount and it's not the government doing it (*eyeroll*).

In all seriousness, if you want to whore yourself out for "discounts", I'd normally say that's your problem, not mine - but then I realize that the rest of us will get dinged for NOT opting-in, so damnit, stop that you idiots!

Actually, as someone who is a pretty conservative driver, I welcomed the option to let worse drivers subsidize my premiums in exchange for them tracking my driving for a while. I could care less that they know (for example) that I always signal turns and lane changes and don't aggressively accelerate or stop. I could also care less that people who can't demonstrate the same behavior are seen as a higher risk and charged a higher premium.

...except you, of course, since you're on my \. frinds list and all...

I agree...IF the insurance company publicly discloses what it deems is a "good" driver versus a "bad" driver (e.g., stays within xkm/h of the speed limit, makes % mistakes per month like failing to signal), and IF they provide me with every piece of data they collect so I can do my own verification. Otherwise, no way! If I can't audit it, I won't agree to it.

He goes exactly the speed limit.....he doesn't heed the law that says "Slower traffic move right"

..and he is preventing you from getting a speeding fine. What's the problem?

He claims to be a safe driver by violating the law that says he must yield to faster traffic. He's making the road dangerous by trying to enforce speed limits on others rather than moving out of traffic for others to exercise their free will. People will speed whether he gets in the way or not. If he wants to enforce speed limits, he should go into law enforcement. Its hypocritical to criticize people for speeding and then violate the law yourself.

...ever put in that car insurance fob into your auto's computer port? (e.g. Progressive's Snapshot [progressive.com], where they treat it as a cute little device that aggressively records everything your car is doing when you drive.

Very interesting... thanks for the link, I just signed up. I did find it interesting that my 2004 Durango is compatible with their device, but my 2013 LEAF is not.

Pump yourself gas stations are an example. Perhaps you don't remember when all warranties were assumed to be through the store you bought the thing at. If it broke and it was small, you take it to the store, they give you a new one. If large, they come out and fix on site or bring you a new one. Then that was extra, then it got replaced with the 'extended warranty' where you take it back and they mail it off to be fixed (or not).

Before my time, the doctor came to you. Then that cost extra, then it was gone and still nobody can afford the doctor without insurance. Speaking of which, the horrible HMOs with their in-network this and out-of-network that and crazy medical coding used to be a cheaper option to conventional you go to the doctor, send us the bill insurers.(the latter were proportionally cheaper than the HMO plans of today).

Remember the milkman?

Remember when you could go to the department store and have a sales person who knew all about everything in the department and would stay with you as long as it took? Or you could go to the discount store and figure it out yourself but pay less. Now even the high end stores are more like the discount stores and the discount stores can't even manage to show you the same model you saw on the web.

There are already insurance penalties for certain kinds of cars

Yes, some rather expensive cars include rather expensive insurance. Most are not buying those because they can't afford them or the insurance. There is a big difference between that situation and be spied on by little brother or ride a bicycle.

Auto insurance compete a lot on branding and somewhat on extras, but a lot less on price/service than they would have you believe.

When a company decides to raise the prices across the board, and then give people the *option* of having a device installed into their car that monitors everything they do in the hope that the price they pay will go back down to where it was a year ago, it isn't a discount. It is a predatory operating practice designed to exploit a captive customer base.

With more accurate information insurance premiums can be set more accurately and this will result in savings. We can debate what portion of the savings will wind up with the insurance company, the corporate employer, or the individual insured.

Even if none of the profits wind up with the insurance company they may not mind. While the profits would be lower there would be lower risks with those profits. Boring stable profits are preferred to violate uncertain profits all things being equal.

Nah, why be so hard? You can safe on premiums, up to 20% lower premiums for you if you bend over and... oh wait, you could catch something from that. OK, up to 20% savings on premiums if you, well, sit around at home and not do anything that could remotely be considered fun. No, wait, that would be unhealthy. So, 20% off if you stay at home when you're not at work and spend at least 20 hours a week on our monitored home gym (of course you have to buy that first).

#2 - Get rid of the supposed bureaucrats, doctors and pharmacists that try to second-guess real doctors and pharmacists that actually know the patients and their conditions.#6 - The government should stop forcing people to buy coverage they don't want.

Better yet, get yourself an NHS, and give everyone a basic health plan funded out of general revenue.

The usual corporate pigs will scream blue murder, but everyone will forget it once they realize the absolutely massive efficiency gains to be made, by having the system waste vast resources handling private insurance overhead instead of healing people.

The NHS over here is a gigantic, expensive command economy (and one of the biggest employers in the world), and it isn't quite up to Mayo Clinic standards, but

And the same people who ruled they couldn't outlaw Big Gulps will also be running health care too, or are the courts somehow not part of the government? Your agument seems to be different people in government have different opinions, but in this case, the right people had the ultimate say - that proves everyone in government thinks alike and will doubtless do the wrong thing. Like Dumbledore said to Pippin in Star Wars, "Illogical".